Sometime Crockett is a little unclear as to volume or style in recipes, today’s and tomorrows recipes are a case in point. Crockett was the Waldorf’s official ‘historian’ which I suspect means he never really worked in the bar himself, and the drinks sound like they came more from documentation, and Mr Solon, bartender extraordinaire from the hotel.

Flavour with grapefruit isn’t massively helpful when trying to recreate a recipe, I went for 2 parts Plymouth, one part Italian and one part Grapefruit juice, and a dash of grapefruit bitters. I’ve seen other old recipes which call for the drink to be shaken with grapefruit peel, and maybe just a dash of grapefruit bitters would be sufficient.

As it happens, 1 part grapefruit juice completely overpowered the drink, and it was mostly just grapefruit unfortunately, I think next time a teaspoon of juice and a dash of bitters would be more than enough, as any more means that the vermouth is just completely lost, adding sweetness, but no flavour. This is a drink to try again.